Champ, the Lake Champlain Mythological Monster has its own stuffed toys and an entire room at the Shelburne Farms Museum in Vermont, but he hasn’t been on Letterman.

The Lake Hopatcong green anaconda merited mentions on The Tonight Show and The Colbert Report, but the state Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) official opinion is that the snake is as much a myth as Champ or Scotland’s Loch Ness Monster.

There is speculation the idea of a "Lake Ness Monster" is attracting the curious. Councilman John Young of Hopatcong said he believes more people are on the lake hoping to get a glimpse.

Lake Hopatcong Commissioner Richard Zoschek of Roxbury Township said he was worried about the snake discouraging tourism.

Zoschek may be right. Hopatcong State Park personnel forwarded statistics to the DEP press office that estimate an attendance drop of 10 percent for the first weeks of July compared to the same weeks in 2013. Larry Hana of the press office said the suspicion is that is due to the possibility of a snake.

Larry Ragonese, the DEP’s chief spokesman, didn’t discount the idea that a pet owner got tired of the maintenance or the cost of rats for food and discarded a snake in the lake.

He said the team scoured the Halsey Island area of the lake looking for shed skin, unusual droppings or any other concrete evidence of the presence of a snake larger than the racers or copperheads native to Northern New Jersey. They didn’t find any. Traps set by the Division of Fish and Wildlife yielded no results, he added.

"There is no evidence of a species depleted or pets disappearing,’ he said, "no biological evidence at all."

In addition, in spite of all the hype, there were no confirmed reports of sightings.

"We had no solid confirmed reports," Ragonese said, "There are thousands of eyes on the lake including the Marine Police, the State Park employees, the weed harvesting team, the folks at the marinas, boaters, jet skiers."

No one ever called the DEP about the snake. The state got initial reports second hand.

"The mayors (of the four lake towns) got calls that people were not going to the beaches or the state park," he said, "so we took it seriously."

A homeowner on Halsey Island first reported the snake. Reptile expert Gerald Andrejcak of Common Sense for Animals, a veterinary hospital and shelter in Franklin Township, Warren County, came up to the lake and says he saw the snake in the same area.

Ragonese said the state experts were skeptical. Andrejcak returned to the same area each time he came up and the state team said it wasn’t likely the snake would keep returning or would be so afraid of people.

"If someone put the snake into the lake, it would not be skittish, it would be acclimated to people," Ragonese said.

He also noted on a busy lake during a busy season it could easily have been hit by a jet ski or a boat.

Initial reports called the snake a boa constrictor and estimates of its size ranged from 12 to 20 feet long.

Very large for a boa would be 15 feet, according to Kyle Pursel of the Highlands-Cashiers Land Trust in Cashiers, N.C. Pursel studied zoology at SUNY Oswego and received a masters in herpetology from Western Carolina University.

Andrejcak said the snake was a green anaconda. Pursel called the presence of such a snake in Lake Hopatcong "highly unlikely."

Andrejcak said he saw the snake at night and saw a picture of it other than the one that appeared on Facebook that was later revealed to be Photoshopped.